Long Beach Historical Museum

The house at 226 W. Penn Street was part of the original Estates of Long Beach, platted in the early 1900s and designed to turn a barrier island into a resort destination. Early houses in the development were required to be built in the Mission style or Spanish Colonial Revival style. The style was supposed to evoke the resorts along the Mediterranean Sea, as visited by the mastermind, U.S. Senator William Reynolds.

The house sits on a poured-in-place concrete foundation and is a wood frame, stick built structure with the exterior stuccoed and painted white. The roof is red tile, straight barrel terra cotta, with a dormer window on each side. The first floor, including the porches, covers about 2,300 square feet, while the upper story is only 1,200 square feet. There is a partially unfinished basement with about 900 square feet of storage space. The front of the house faces north; the main entrance is recessed at the right end of a colonnaded porch that wraps around the eastern side of the house. The floor of the front porch is red-tinted concrete, scored into blocks. The eastern portion of the porch was originally open-air and was glass-enclosed by 1914, according to the Sanborn Fire Insurance map. The eastern porch now features stuccoed walls and four pairs of French doors. To the right of the entrance is a pair of French doors leading into the dining room wing; a large casement window from the dining room faces the front of the house. An enclosed western porch abuts the dining room, with a large, arch-shaped window on the house front. Above the dining room window is another casement window with a reconstructed, decorative wooden balcony.

A pergola in the back yard of the house has a brick floor constructed of bricks salvaged from the original paving of this block near the Laurelton Boulevard intersection, before the intersection was macademized. Landscaping around the house resembled a sandy beach in an early photo; garden beds with shrubbery and grassy lawns dominate now. A driveway along the east side of the house leads to the early twentieth-century garage, which also is contributing to the property's significance. The white-painted stucco walls and red tile roof of the garage tie the building's style to the house.

Entering the front door of the house, you would be in a broad center hall, with a wooden staircase opposite the door, leading to the second story. The walls of the hall were covered with reproduction wall paper when the house/ museum was documented for listing in the National Register in 2008. The orginal entrance doors and much of the woodwork were original to the house and reflect the Craftsman style of workmanship. Wall sconces and chandeliers of the first floor hall may be the originals, but the wood parquet floors are likely later.

The house at 226 W. Penn Street was built as a summer residence. It was purchased by the Lewis family by 1914. The Barretts, a family connected to Vaudeville entertainment, bought the home by the mid-1930s. At first used as a summer home, the Barret family eventually resided here full-time. A Barrett sold the house to the Long beach Historical and Preservation Society in 1997 who established their headquarters and a museum within. The not-for-profit society was founded in 1980 and provides archives and exhibits as well as local tours on Long Beach history. Some of the usual events, like the society's spring yard sale, still happened in April 2020 and 2021 with restrictions due to the pandemic; others, like the July 2020 craft fair, were cancelled.

Bartos, Virginia L. Geraci, Carole Shada. NRHP Nomination of House at 226 West Penn Street, Long Beach, N.Y.. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 2008.

Long Beach Historical & Preservation Society. Home, Long Beach Historical & Preservation Society. April 1st 2020. Accessed April 18th 2021. http://longbeachhistoricalsociety.org/.